Wow... this is some great stuff (it feels like it has everything I missed in Tower of Druaga)
I never heard of the "Tales of ..... " series before Oo
were the other series also good? and did they have the same characters?
For some reason I'm pretty sure I've seen "Tear" before .. could have been some artwork were I saw her though
All of the "Tales of" anime series are based on games of the same name. They all have different worlds and characters, except for the ones that are obviously direct sequels (Tales of Destiny and Tales of Destiny 2, for example).
In my opinion, Tales of the Abyss has the best story of any of the games (and I've played all of the ones that have been released in the US), although the others are pretty good, too. If you like TotA, you'll probably also like Tales of Symphonia and Tales of Vesperia. There was an OVA based on ToS that is pretty decent, but it might be hard to follow if you're not familiar with the game.
Anyway, so far I think the anime's off to a pretty good start... I've heard some people complain that it seems to much like a generic fantasy anime, and I have to admit that it starts off pretty generically, but give it a chance, it will get much better. The second episode introduces Jade, who is basically the best character ever, period.
Also, yes, Luke is a dick. Don't worry, he'll get better. Luke is going to go through a lot of character development.
I don't even dislike Luke that much yet for a couple of reasons: He's royalty and as such it's no surprise he's a dick, especially since he has been apparently locked into the palace with few responsibilities that would have developed him or make him interact with people of many social classes and circumstances. And secondly unlike in some static high-school setting in this current ever changing one his foolishness is a source of dynamism and unpredictability.
I can't say whether it's a generic fantasy anime or not but I think all the "we have seen something like that with different characters" complaining I've seen on other threads and forums for a while are stupid...
It's normal... and it happens in real movies and *especially* in games, too.
@
Well Luke didn't make me worry at all...he doesn't feel like a bad person like some other characters from other animes... like Shinji from FSN for exampleLuke is a dick. Don't worry, he'll get better. Luke is going to go through a lot of character development.
I think it is safe to say this is officially the most oversubbed series this season.
I'll just leave this here
GG - Tales of the Abyss 02
sry but for me it sounds like you would complain about that the boy gets the girl in a romance-animereally, this second episode was so mainstream it really leaves a bad taste.
Isn't doing quests and getting a bigger party sooner or later what RPG and RPG-animes are all about?
and isn't that exactly what you expect and *want* to see while watching an anime like this one?
It's not really uninteresting as you say, I believe that you just don't like the whole genre ^^
I guess you have to like this kind of thing and it's not impossible to overlook that you've heard a similiar story before... let's take final fantasy for example, the basic is always the same... you start alone or with 2.. then 3 and you will probably end with 6 party-members or more, defeat a few bad guys and so on, yet they made ~13 "episodes" with always the same stuff
Last edited by KrayZ33; Wed, 10-08-2008 at 05:29 PM.
For the most part, RPG anime series are not about doing quests and such, with notable exceptions. The Tower of Druaga was intentionally being as much of an RPG as possible, so it indeed had all the trappings of an RPG, from gear to victory loot, formalized parties and all of that. Similar to the way .hack and Ragnarok were.
However, the proper adaptation of an RPG anime is to just take the story out and present it. There isn't any need for lame side quests, grinding experience, getting loot, or slowly building one's party person by person over hours. They just need the story and good action sequences to cover for all the battles. The average rpg clocks in at vaguely 40-80 hours, though more recent ones have shortened to 20. All the side quests that serve only to get your party really nice gear, all the random battles and what have you send the time up to that limit.
On the other hand, even given a full 26 episode season of anime (or double-season of 13 each depending on your preference) that only clocks in at a measley 10 hours. When adapating a longer rpg, there really isn't all that much time to waste.
While Druaga and series like it are fun, I'm not here to watch an rpg play itself out. I'm here for the story. I've seen rpg series done well, it's very possible. Arc the Lad only used the game characters as cameos and the foundation of the latter half of the plot, the rest was mostly original story. Hell, even IdolMaster managed to pull a decent mecha series and plot out of a game where you molest young starlets on their way to fame (seriously...check youtube).
The Tales series of games have plenty of story in them. With how many details they crammed into the first episode as they rushed through, I'm wondering why they are wasting time here.
To be honest, the stories in the Tales series have never been their strong suit, or strongest suit even. There's never really dark, or deep plot twists to speak of. Or overtly complex or deep nuances. And that's not to say all the random names they make up for basically the same thing (blastia, fonic artes, entelexia, blah blah)
The Tales series usually boils down to a very similiar amount of archetypes, they usually fall under the boy matures into a man, or the man matures into a human being. And nine out of ten, it's about some friendship mumbo jumbo. Though it's not to say the stories in the Tales series aren't consistent, and on average enjoyable.
weib, osu, shinsen, gg, a.s.s, abyssalchronicles, yuurisan, and now Aero
Thats 8 (yes 8) different fansub groups, 5 of which are established all subbing this show (and I'm sure I missed a few). Such as the anonymous submitted gg+Osu subs muxed with Weib's video.
Why are so many people subbing this show? Does the game come with a free 8 ball or something to make everyone obsessed with the anime incarnation in hopes of getting some sort of contact high? I can't think of anything more generic (not that that's a bad thing) than a fantasy adventure about a random member of royalty with a prophecy about him. Where are the Kamen no Maid-guy subbers? Where are the Zettai Karen Children subbers? Why do only generic shows ever seem to get subbed by everyone all at once. This seems to be a massive waste of effort (not that tales shouldn't be subbed by anyone, just not 8+ groups).
/rant
Okay I've actually watched the ep, other than the fact that Tear likes cute things and looks cute herself there wasn't too much here that I found interesting, still it was engaging enough and flowed well enough that I didn't feel bored through most of it. That said I don't think I've ever been so cognizant of RPG elements in an anime before. The whole thing with the furry woodland creatures and the potential for Lawful/Chaotic alignment shifts just screamed RPG side quest. I could almost hear the music that should have played when Fon joined the party though.
Last edited by Yukimura; Thu, 10-09-2008 at 12:08 AM.
Ryl was right on the money, and that was my complaint about episode 2. They introduced a bunch of new characters, and I'm assuming that was how it was done in the game as well, but the feel for most of the episode was "Ho~hum~"
I love RPGs and fantasy adventure, but the annoying "build yourself up" crap at the beginning has always been one of my least favorite elements (part of the reason I enjoyed FF7, FF6 and Chrono Trigger so much, as they're "starting quests" are pretty freaking epic, relate to the overall story, introduce the characters, and are actually stuff you feel like doing. FFXII? Not so much)
it's an adaptation, it's not the game with the player interaction gutted. the same thing happens with books. monolouges that would take 5+ minutes are removed, pages of characters reflecting silently to themselves are often squashed into a sheer moment or two. being based on a game is no reason that it should blindly take everything from the game (especially lame shit like 'save the cute forest animal' beginner quests) and put it into the anime.
How would you like it if the two episodes right before the final episode was the characters running around some forest/dungeon and fighting the same five monsters over and over again to build levels? I'm pretty sure even "fans of the RPG/adventure genre" would say that makes for bad television.
besides, i despise the "ah~~~ kawaii~~~!" non-human character, since it's almost always the same personality recipe of super nice, cute, powerless until cornered and dumbly loyal. God bless Mog!
oversubbing. i'm surprised people even blink at it. sure, it's frustrating that lots of shows go unfansubbed because everyone is cluster fucking around one or two shows, but would you really want some of these guys working on the show you really like? Seeing as how more and more people are involved in online communities and such these days, don't seem to be getting much smarter as a whole, I'd expect we'll have more and more oversubbing in the future.
Humans are different from animals. We must die for a reason. Now is the time for us to regulate ourselves and reclaim our dignity. The one who holds endless potential and displays his strength and kindness to the world. Only mankind has God, a power that allows us to go above and beyond what we are now, a God that we call "possibility".
Hmmm.. I still think that the "side" quest was well done and it introduced 3 (if we count in that cheagle 4) new characters and it showed us a bit more of what Luke is thinking
other animes would need like 4-5 episode for that :/
so I'm fine with this little "marching into the world"-quest. It was also a great way to introduce the 2 Realms and the whole world.
This anime has some great fighting animation, but I don't know wheter it is normal or not since all I've seen was Ragnarok (sucks) Tower of Druaga (it was "ok") before. The game isn't avaible for PC is it?
Btw I think the characters are animated really well, I havn't seen such good animation in a TV show for a long time, at least not in a TV show with more than 13 episodes.
Tear is my favorite so far (and not only in this show but also in general), she looks really good ^^.
Finally a good looking character without eyes as big as footballs and a good "overall" appearance
and even though it might sound a bit funny, but I'm really glad they decided to draw both eyes now and then and didn't block her right eye with hair for the whole time like in other animes (for example Ino in Naruto comes into my mind right now, but there are others too).
At least for me, such minor details are actually very important. It makes the whole thing look a lot more realistic. (I'm talking about small details in general, not only that "hair in front of the eye"-thingy :P)
Last edited by KrayZ33; Thu, 10-09-2008 at 04:40 PM.
Episode 3 - gg
- - - - - - -
Goddamn bloody hell. I'm ready to drop this series. And to think I considered this one of the more promising series of this season. And then came this third episode and apparently the script writer ate a load of bad mushrooms and suddenly rewrote the hotheaded Luke into a whimpering coward running away from every fight and rather wanting to die than defend himself. What the fuck is that? I skipped a third of this episode because I couldn't bear to watch it. I honestly don't know if I want to watch the next episode anymore.
I think this is what people call "overreacting" don't you think so kraco?Goddamn bloody hell. I'm ready to drop this series. And to think I considered this one of the more promising series of this season. And then came this third episode and apparently the script writer ate a load of bad mushrooms and suddenly rewrote the hotheaded Luke into a whimpering coward running away from every fight and rather wanting to die than defend himself. What the fuck is that? I skipped a third of this episode because I couldn't bear to watch it. I honestly don't know if I want to watch the next episode anymore.
let's see....
1. This is the first time that Luke is away from his "safe-house"
2. He nearly got killed by a Liger in the forest
3. A horde of these things is attacking the ship all of a sudden
4. He trained his swordmanship because he was probably extremely bored and did it for fun
5. He never killed a man before, but I guess in the anime world, everyone has to be a ruthless killer who enjoys hurting other people.
and
6. when did we see him being "hotheaded"
the first time he fought against a monster, he was extremely scared and you could see that he isn't used to stuff like this at all... he was breathing like he just ran a marathon, while Tear was just being "normal"
Right now Luke can do nothing but bragging about his royality, which comes to point 7:
He is a spoiled kid, who doesn't know a thing about whats going on right now, because he is not used to the whole situation
His attitude makes perfekt sense at the moment
@ episode 3:
pretty good ep, even though I'll never understand why tear was moving in between the soldier and luke, instead of stabbing or at least parrying the swing with her spear which is like 1 and a half metres long
edit: oh and you can see in the preview that Luke has a lot less problems with killing monsters :P
Last edited by KrayZ33; Sun, 10-12-2008 at 07:31 AM.
This event happened the same way in the game. Luke has not once left his house in the past 7 years, the only thing combat related that he had to deal with was sword training with his teacher.Originally Posted by Kraco
Luke has the mentality of a child because of the way he was brought up, plus he only has his memories from the time he was locked up in his house and nothing else. This was also the first time he fought a human being, i'm pretty sure that killing a monster is drastically different than killing another human being especially for some kid who knows almost nothing about the world.
Most of the earlier episode will deal with how Luke handle the various situation that arise and how it will change him as a person. I think if this kind of things annoy you to the point that you are willing to drop the series then you should not follow this show every week. It would be best to wait for more episodes to come out and then skip through the annoying part concerning Luke.
...or we could just wonder why so many subbers (three of them quality) have chosen to focus their efforts on this series that has yet to really display why it should be subbed this extensively.
I'm sure the game is great, but the anime has been a very large disappointment for me.
Yeah i find that to be ridiculous especially since Skip Beat! and Macademi Wasshoi are still not subbed yet.
Looking back at the game story line (which they seem to be following), there are a lot of events for them to cover, so they combine some scene like they did in this episode which completely killed the pacing.
They do have a lot of episodes left though, i'm wondering if they are simply condensing the earlier contents so they have more room for the juicy stuff at the end of the game.
Last edited by Dark Dragon; Sun, 10-12-2008 at 12:57 PM.
Oh, well. I admit I might have overreacted, but that's only because previously I wasn't annoyed by Luke at all, despite his obvious naivete. That's because he seemed to happily enough slice to pieces the beasts when they were attacked almost immediately upon arrival at the continent and later he happily went to hunt for the apple thieves and attacked the huge liger in the forest without that much hesitation. And he has been constantly mouthing off to all manner of people so far, showing no social cowardice.
Yet now the first thing he wanted to do was to flee before even seeing the enemy and then he would have rather died than even raised his sword to block an attack (when the beard man pinned him to the wall). But I only started the skipping when he became a total and complete shocked wuss and a different character altogether after killing (by accident due to his good training) the lone soldier.
There are people who rather die meekly than ever raise a hand to defend themselves, but this dude clearly wasn't one of them in the beginning when he risked his life to defend his teacher in the first ep. That's why I said his character got suddenly and unrealistically changed in this episode, and that pissed me off immensely.
Fighting beasts can be considered different than fighting people. But maybe it's only BS.
Or is there a relationship with him being brainwashed?
All the things I really like to do are either illegal, immoral, or fattening. And then: Golf.
I think Luke's reaction when he killed the a human for the first time is justified. Having a 7 year old child brain and being spoiled for most of his life(7 years) and then you suddenly killed a person? His fear is really realistic. And his character didn't change at all, remember when he first fought monsters with tear in the forest? Luke was scared shitless. It's just he adapted with the help of tear with her lessons in the world. Its too early to judge Luke's character or his character development in this early part of the series. Just watch the coming episodes and I'm sure you won't be disappointed.
Thanks shinta|hikari for the sig.
i actually really enjoyed this episode, despite a few head scratchers like not posting any guards to a prison block housing the captured commander of the ship you just stole, underlings throwing down weapons for a superior officer being held hostage, then the superior officer throwing down her weapons for her underlings taken hostage, then all of them sitting quietly and sending a fistful of faceless grunts to give chase once all hostages have been let go...
but Jade is cool, and I thought Luke's freak-out was done well enough. they usually don't spend enough time on the first kill, on the prospect of future killing. i like how Jade and Tear just sort of said "that's how it is". truth hurts.
I despise Miew
watching episode 1, i got these ridiculous inneundo vibes from a few scenes with Guy and Luke, and at first I was scratching my head and thinking, "is this just me? or is this as gay as it seems?" This episode set my doubts to rest. But where the fuck did he come from so quickly? Silly.
Humans are different from animals. We must die for a reason. Now is the time for us to regulate ourselves and reclaim our dignity. The one who holds endless potential and displays his strength and kindness to the world. Only mankind has God, a power that allows us to go above and beyond what we are now, a God that we call "possibility".
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